


Feel no fear

by Dalissy



Category: Magic Kaito, 名探偵コナン | Detective Conan | Case Closed
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood and Gore, F/M, Hanahaki Disease, Implied/Referenced Character Death, KaiAo, Major Character Injury, Near Death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-07 08:18:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18869344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dalissy/pseuds/Dalissy
Summary: “...If I make the roses go red, will you be able to recover?”Since childhood, Kaito bears a disease that will eventually take him to the grave. But now, endeavouring to endure his sufferings, he surprises himself dreaming of a cure again. A cure with the face of a certain little girl who he came to fall in love with -may it be life, or death.KaiAo Hanahaki Disease!AU





	Feel no fear

**Author's Note:**

> I have been willing to write a Hanahaki Disease KaiAo AU for some time now, so here it is.  
> Be careful : I may take a lot of liberties with the original Hanahaki Disease prompt. Plus, if you are especially sensitive to gore, I advice you not to read this fic -even though I am not especially talented at it and I don't think there'll be much of it, I really enjoy describing injuries and I don't want you to feel uncomfortable.  
> I don't know how long this fanfic will be, but from experience, I think it will be around 6-7 parts of 3000-5000 words (vaguely).
> 
> This work is dedicaced to my dear friends Minna and Clothilde who proofread it and helped me correcting my English even though they know nothing about DCMK! But also to Zed, Beuah and Kwo, who are all amazing writers (& artists!), because without them all my life would totally sucks <3

“Does it hurt?”

He lifted his head. His eyes grew wider out of shock.   
Pure blue sapphire eyes. Chocolate brown hair. White skin. 

In front of him, was a little girl - but not any little girl. Definitely not. She was the little girl whom he instinctively came to meet under a certain clock when himself was merely anything but a little boy. She was the little girl that had become the teenager-- the woman he loved. The one that just faded from his view along with his own consciousness.   
Loved… Only now he realized it. Only now it appeared crystal clear to him. He no longer had the luxury to deny it or to find excuses.

Only now, though he was lying on the ground, sweating, heavily breathing as he was on the verge of death, and she was standing there, he realized how tiny she was. Of course, he couldn't see, when himself was a child and they were the same high but... now, if he wanted, he could crush her between his arms.   
And the thought terrified him.  
  
“Does it hurt?” She repeated, her small feet backing up a bit.

“...Would you believe me, if I told you it doesn't?”  
She shook her head. A wry laugh escaped his throat.   
  
“Yes. It hurts pretty badly.”

For a second, she stayed silent. Humecting her lips. Her eyes humid. He couldn't do anything to stop her upcoming cries -because anything he would say would just make things worse and holding her with the smell of blood mixed with the strange floral perfume around him was out of the question.

She timidly whispered "Can... Can I do anything to ease your pain?"  
  
It's uncurable, he wanted to declaim coldly. So, she would not have any hopes to begin with. The disappointment would hurt less now than after making her believe anyone could do anything -that she, with her little meter and small four members, could do anything.  
It was what he always has been repeated since he was a child. And despite her tears, despite all her trials, there's no cure. Except perhaps accepting death. But wasn't that what he was just doing, with this dream mist right in front of him?

Yet, for once... he did not have the courage to tell this anymore. He wanted to believe... there was actually a cure.

“Actually... Yes. There is something you can do.”

Her face lightened up. Sparkles spread in her eyes; her whole body instantly ready to run at the other side of the world for the sake of his only request. He smiled in amusement -but the curl of his lips soon distorted painfully.  
“Will you accept a gift?”

She blinked a dozen times -she did not really understand, but certainly was too shy and proud to admit it, and slightly nodded. 

Slowly, he painfully rose up his back, got rid of his jacket, untied his tie, unbuttoned his shirt.   
She gasped, putting her hands on her mouth in shock. With exhausted yet kind eyes, he glanced back at her.  
“Ah... Yes. Don't worry... This may look bad, but I bear it dearly… Because if I didn't yo-... someone I really care about would have been hurt. But still, you might want to avert your eyes now. I won't scold you.”  
It certainly was something a child shouldn't look at. 

An enormous wound ran across the skin of his right lower belly -the hundreds of veins that composed it were energetically beating, as if on the verge of exploding. Underneath the fabrics of his clothes and the mask of his poker face, nobody could suspect a thing about this burden he bore all this time. But now, revealed, there simply were no ways to forget it. It was etched in the retina.   
A swollen bump underneath a single scar, nearly tearing apart. It appeared as red as a pool of blood ready to flood the room. 

He saw her lower lip tremble, the scared expression on her sweet face. Yet she did not look away. She confronted the disgusting view with a whole new kind of determination.

“You're brave.”  
A compliment was all he could manage to form with this useless body of his, along with a hand sign, asking her to come closer -and, with clumsy footsteps, she approached.

“But... trust me.”

He took off his top hat, and as if ashamed to have his head and face completely revealed to the light, he delicately put it on her instead. Of course, it was way too big for her. It suddenly fell upon her own eyes. Soon enough, her minuscule fingers tried to reach it in an attempt of lifting it up, but he grasped her wrists with one single hand -not brutally or hurtfully, but firmly enough to make her mouth gape. She stopped moving.  
And with a little impulse of his finger on her chest, she backed up and left his hat where it was as she understood that...

“It's not a thing anyone should have to see once in their life.” He solemnly announced in a last peaceful sigh.

Soon, pushed by something on the inside, his whole wound widened like the pupil of a cat slowly dilating. Blood pearled across the whiteness of his skin, of his pants, of his tightened gloves, dyeing it with such easiness it felt unstoppable. Drops joined one another, drew a web of morbid fluids all over his stomach.   
Her sight was obstructed -and yet she was shaking with all her might. Maybe because fear ordered her so.  
She certainly guessed what was happening. 

He knew she was intelligent, even when she was only seven years old. But that also was the problem. She was, right now, seven years old. With the sensibility that came with it.  
Even if she was an illusion of his dying mind, he instantly regretted covering her eyes. Wasn't it crueller? Isn't the fear of the end, drove by unlimited imagination, always way worse than the actual true end?   
He... did not know anymore. Everything seemed… so confused. His sight, his thoughts only became blurrier and scrappier as pain increased.

Yes, he'd try to comfort her -if only he didn't have to crisp his jaws with all his might not to scream out of pain, if the strong coughs didn't make him feel as if his lungs were going to be thrown up, if it wasn't as if needles were mercilessly plunged into his chest from the inside, as the flower emerged out of his own flesh. 

A single pale blue rose. Thorns scattered his flesh on its way out. He panted. Its gorgeous leaves spread in the pure white light.  
It took roots within his insides, and now, finally let out on the outside, bloomed in the most horrible way possible. Its beauty was indescribable. His royal blue colour, unique.

Its heart smelled like nostalgia, melancholy and joy... or at least it seemed to Kaito, because that is what it reminded him along with the special scent of cola sweets and chocolates he used to eat with his parents -with Aoko. The fresh French perfume his mother used to love so much. It also bore the bitterness of tobacco and dust from the stage that was inertly combined with the memory of his father and that he somehow seemed to have inherited a bit.  
On top of all that... it had the invasive smell of floral dew in the morning. The one that haunted him since years -the one he cursed the most.

How was it even allowed for such a magnificence to blossom when it was nothing more but a parasite feeding on his blood and his guts? A leech taking his already little time, being a mere human, away from him? Even now, after all this time and suffering, he still wondered.  
However, aren't the most beautiful flowers born from evil, after all...?

“Is it over?...”

A childish voice made him leave his inner, elusive monologue and come back to his fading senses.  
She didn't take off the hat -instead, her tiny fingers tightened upon the rim.   
It tore his heart apart to break this truth to her innocent hope. _It is never over_. He learned over the years.  
“Not yet.”

With weak gests, he grasped the cutter that was within the inner pocket of his jacket thrown aside. With the palm of his free hand, he grasped firmly the thorny stem. He did not care about his ruined gloves, the blood pearls that came along with penetration of the thorns into his skin.

It did not matter if his body turned into unrecognizable pieces, if it was from his own hand. It was too late anyway -and in this case, he preferred to exceed destiny himself.   
He once was an arrogant phantom thief and magician, after all. 

Enduring the pain, piercing his lower lips with his canines in the process... Even though his dexterity vanished, he cut the rose. It fell on the ground, among amounts of scarlet drops. Blood poured out like small fireworks.

There was no way he could stop the haemorrhage. He could only feel his life rushing away from his body with his vital fluids.  
She was still waiting.

He did not have the strength to be careful anymore -but he still was thoughtful. His right hand was wandering on the ground, his chin immobile, his sclera nearly opaque. When he finally found his blue shirt, he simply put it on his injury -as useful as a band-aid on a wooden leg. At least, she wouldn't have to see the gaping hole in his stomach, like a dead eye which cried continuously and tainted the fabric in a sticky purple pond. 

One hand on the shirt -the other slowly raising up what has birthed his suffering and pain, somehow and unfairly clean from any of the impurity it had brought.  
“You can look now.”  
  
Shyly, hesitantly, little Aoko raised the hat. Looked as asked.   
Froze in horror. 

There probably were no words to describe how piteous he must have looked. But he had too little time to pity on his fate, and lightly shook the flower in front of her.  
“Y-You can have it...” he mumbled powerlessly. “If you want. You... like these, don't you?”

Her eyes widened. Immediately, as if entranced by the rose, she came near, and, making him sigh in relief, accepted to receive the strange present between her tiny fingers.  
His eyes closed. It wasn't much -it was nothing. No magic trick, no proudness. But at least... Now he could go peacefully.  
That was what he thought.  
  
“ _Liar.”_  
He lifted his chin, suddenly opened his eyelids -only to see tears crossing her little cheeks.   
So, until the end, he'd made her cry, wouldn’t he?

“...'s wrong...”

“You told m-me…” she argued with floating, lamenting words “…that you'll feel better if I accepted your g-gift! But you are... you are...”

“Well... I... do...”

“You don't! How did this happen?! Why?! It.... it just isn't fair!”  
She moaned and moaned. 

Yes, why? Why didn't he have the strength to pull up his arm and wipe her tears anymore? Why wasn't he able to move? Why has his throat and heart always felt tighter and tighter over the years?  
It was only because of _them_. And yet. And yet... he couldn't totally hate them.

“...They must have felt lonely.”  
He somehow managed to let these words leave his cold lips, even through the petals and roots that now invaded his tongue, his glottis, the corner of his eyes, falling like material tears.  
“...Uh?” she said, surprised, between two sobs.

“...Blue... roses... don't naturally exist. Therefore... maybe... they tried to redden in my blood... so they could be... like any other.”  
It was a stupid thought. A pitiful excuse. A childish lie, almost a fairy tale. However, whether he wanted it or not, these flowers were part of him, as parasites sometimes fuse with their owner. And he couldn't... he couldn't...

“...If I make the roses go red, will you be able to recover?”   
...Naturally, to a stupid hypothesis, answer something even more stupid. If he still could, he'd openly laugh. That was always how both of them worked, wasn’t it? Two children trying to win the contest of intelligence by the bias of making the most foolish and unbelievable things.   
  
He wanted to answer. Answer something even more idiot and dreamy. It was a wish that came from the bottom of his choking heart. His real, last wish.  
Yet clovers covered and sealed his mouth forever, as ruins being reconquered by nature. He could barely hear. Barely breath. Barely feel -feel this little body of her that rushed to him, hugged him, cried in his neck, as he fell into the abyss.   
  
“I'll find a way! I'll do anything, I promise!! So please, please... Don't die, Kaito!”

This voice that rang is his ear was no longer a child’s one.

* * *

 

It all began how everything, especially troubles, ever began in his life.

“Are you ready, Kaito?”

“Yeah!”

It all began with his father.  
He loved his suave voice and his enormous, masculine yet elegant gloved hands. He loved it when, blowing out of them yet appearing out of nowhere at the same time, there were confetti, sparkles, even doves and bunnies sometimes.

But, above it all, he adored people’s expressions when entire bouquets of flowers magically expanded in front of them, without any warning or explanation, by the strength of his talent alone. He felt like he could contemplate forever this mix of surprise, immediately replaced with an admirative smile and glimmering eyes. It was a sensation he wished would never fade away.

Magic made people dream, and he cherished the happiness, excitement and joy these shards of fantasy offered.  
That was why, the instant his father came home like any other day and that gorgeous bouquet of red roses grew up from his palms, right under his mother’s nose, he yelled from the bottom of his lungs before she could even thank him with a kiss.

“I WANT TO DO THAT, TOO!”

He was a child. He was still learning how to even hold a pen correctly; he had tiny, fragile fingers; his moves were uneasy and his gesture, clumsy -for it is not easy to keep such energy in such a small body-; his favourite activity was sneaking into his father’s aviary to bring back doves to his bedroom and sleep with them -and ending being grounded because these troublemakers ruined his room again.

And despite all that, he knew one thing for sure: when he’ll be a grown up, he wanted to be exactly like him.  
This internationally renowned showman. The best magician in the world, and, he learned it many years later, the greatest phantom thief, that came by the name of _Touichi Kuroba_. No less.

However, little did he know that the path would be this difficult…

“Three… two… one!”

A white rose quickly appeared between his thumb and index finger -along with the brightest smile on his face. But, when he was about to think he actually, finally did it…

“It’s broken again!”

Its small head was facing the ground, its stem split in two. The sparkling of hope in Kaito’s eyes became a sombre disappointment.  
“I messed up again…”

He pouted. The innocent plant was roughly thrown on the ground, among many others. He gave a useless kick in them before his knees succumbed under his weight and his arms folded on the glass coffee table. His liquid turquoise eyes faced the dozens of different flowers that were on it.

There were small ones, fresh pansies, daisies, poppies they bought in the morning. These were the easier one to pull out because of their littleness. He managed to master them in no time. The real troubles were the bigger ones. Irises, lilies, daffodils and… roses.

Not only these last ones were big, but they hurt him when pulled incorrectly in the slightest -and when he found a way not to be hurt, he snapped them in two. He did not even know it was possible in the first place.  
He did not count his trials, but they were way too numerous to be indulgent about it. The cemetery of flowers lying on the floor was an undeniable proof.

He heard his father sigh, sitting on the couch. His fists tightened -and this big hand he admired so much patted his back lovingly.

“It’s alright, Kaito. Becoming a magician is also learning to be patient. Don’t be too rough to yourself.”

“It’s not myself I dislike!” he argued with frowned brows. “It’s the flowers. They’re so mean to me.”

The answer he expected the less was this smooth laugh he got. He turned back, only to see his father openly chuckling.  
“Dad!” he shouted while standing, annoyed.  
“Ah, yes-” Touichi cleared his throat. “Excuse me. But you shouldn’t be so harsh on the flowers neither.”  
“But it’s their fault! They keep on splitting apart just to laugh at me!”

Again, he sat unsatisfied and was about to smash petals that got on his way -if he wasn’t arrested in the middle of it, his wrist locked in his father’s hand.

“First of all, if you damage the table, not only Mommy will be mad at us, but she will worry that you’ve injured your hand, and so will I. Secondly, this is a work of cooperation, Kaito.”

Catching his child by the tummy, Touichi made him sit on his knees. A curious look animated the kid’s round face. However, in a confident move, the magician then threw a blanket on the pile of white roses, removed in an eyeblink. The flowers were no more. They disappeared in a single puff of smoke. Then…

“Three… Two… One!”

A downpour of white roses rained on their head. Each one of them floated in the air a second, as graceful as a dove’s feathers falling from the sky, before meeting the ground and ending up in clouds of hundreds teared petals. One of them bumped on Kaito’s forehead before it could disintegrate itself, jumped into his hands while his jaw dropped to the ground.  
He didn’t see anything coming. It was a mere percent of his father’s capacity, and yet this was enough to prove Kaito that no one could ever be better than him at surprising people.

“Flowers wither in short time once cut,” explained Touichi. “They offer you this little amount of time to magnify their existence, Kaito, like they sublime your performance by their supernatural beauty. That is why, whatever happens, you must take good care of them -and to whom you offer them. Each flower holds a very special meaning, and the people that compose a public are the same. They’re unique and you can’t treat them as a feelingless whole.”

“Really?”

“Of course.”

To illustrate his sayings, Touichi picked one of the white roses that fell on the armrest.

“A white rose symbolizes purity, chastity and innocence. It is very nice rose to offer to someone you respect. Got it?”

“Yes, but… What does ‘chastity’ mean?” asked Kaito with a raised eyebrow.

“…Ask your mother.”

No doubt, he frowned at the unsatisfying response, but before he could go on with his interrogations -and oh, Kaito was _very_ skilled at never getting tired of asking the same questions over and over again until he got his answer-, he was interrupted by the palm of Touichi’s hand showing him a vase on the shelf, filled up with twelve gorgeous crimson roses.

He continued “Red roses represents passion, desire and love. That is why I like to offer them to Mommy. Pansies, remembrance. Lilies, humility and devotion. Daffodils, spirituality and forgiveness. Chrysanthemum, power. Irises, wis…”

“What about these ones?”

Touichi blinked for a second, then followed what Kaito pointed at. Only to be more confused.

“The curtains?”

“Not the curtains!” protested Kaito, balancing himself on his father’s knees as he pointed with all his strength to show what he meant -ignoring the risk of falling. “At their bottom!”

Indeed, at their bottom was no blue fabrics, but fake blossoms sewed to it upside down, to go along with the flower pattern. An eccentricity he never really noticed until now -but became obvious once mentioned. Their colour was dense enough to catch anyone’s eye. Despite their lifeless, they were flawless replicas, and whoever would try to difference them with real flowers from afar would inevitably fail.

“Ah… Blue roses.”

“Yeah, what do they mean?” insisted Kaito with glittering eyes.

“They mean…”  
A phone rang.

Cutting down any further explanations, Touichi reached the nosy device and answered with one hand, while the other gently pushed his son off his knees.

“Jii? Yes, I’ve heard about it. Tonight? Alright. I’m coming right up.”

As his father stood up and took his jacket in less than a second while still babbling on the phone, Kaito rushed to the armrest.

“I’m sorry, Kaito. Looks like we’ll have to pursue the lessons later.”

“Dad! What do they mean, the blue roses?!”  
He only received a pat on the head.

“Well… These are false ones. Blue roses don’t really exist, so there’s no need to know. Furthermore… the only thing I can wish to you is that you never get to use them.”

Kaito blinked in atonement and barely listened when he was flooded by instructions about waiting for his mother to come back and behaving well. One thing only was on his mind.  
The malicious shining scissors on the table encouraged him to make his dream come true.

He smirked. Wasn’t making inexistent things real a magician’s job?

* * *

 

“I’m home.”

It was done in the blink of an eye -and getting easier and easier every night. The sun didn’t even have the time to set -a paradox for a Moonlight Magician, but he never planned for the heist to go this smoothly. Poor inspector Nakamori was unfailingly driven crazy, and right now the diamond was glimmering like hundreds of stars in his hand.

However, the jewel he looked forward seeing now was of a whole another kind. But she stayed silent when he entered the room.  
“Well, my jewel, don’t I deserve a welcome?”

Chikage mischievously smiled while looking back at her husband, her arms folded. There was a slight amusement in her voice, coupled with a light annoyance.  
“Maybe you will when you’ll stop giving your son silly ideas, dear.”

Not a single blue rose remained on the curtain; only pieces of blue fabric ruined by the messy work of a certain young hand and a pair of scissors.

“…I thought we said that from five to ten pm, it was _your_ son.”

* * *

 

Pockets full of posies, under the big clocktower, little Kaito was waiting.  
He contemplated one of the blue roses an instant -then looked at the crowd… before returning his gaze to the plastic imitation. Under the light of sunset, somehow, the navy colour of the linked petals, as soft as velvet, appeared… deeper. As profound as the bottom of an ocean brought to the surface by pure magic.

How pitiful there was no one else to appreciate it as much as him.

Time passed. Minutes stretched again and again, yet his mother’s figure never encountered his field of view, filled with passers-by instead. There were salary men, teenagers, parents carrying their children on their shoulders… but not a single sign of the purplish hair and lips with thick lipstick on them he loved so much when they good night kissed him on the forehead.

How could this be? He was sure she had to walk by this place to go home. He was shivering in excitement at the thought alone of surprising her with his new magic trick -because, if it was for her, he was sure he’d manage it. She’d be so impressed, if she were here…

He sighted, put back the rose among the others in the pockets of his sweater. It was almost night, and the perspective of being yelled at because of the worry he gave made him preoccupied him more than the idea of being lost at such an hour. After all, his name was Kaito _Kuroba_. Shouldn’t darkness be supposed to feel like a second home?  
However he still preferred his real home -and the path would become unrecognizable by then.

He definitely should go back.

But. Because there’s always one.  
An instant after he stood up. Three little steps that took less than a second.

“You’re waiting for someone too?”

Pure blue sapphire eyes. Chocolate brown hair. White skin.  
Soft worried voice.

“Yeah… I just moved out to this town today, and I’m supposed to meet up with my dad here, but…”

It would be a lie to say he noticed her since the beginning. It would be a lie to say it was love at first sight -because it wasn’t. The rose would have been violet.

They were two alone children. That was all. He saw her sorrowful face, her still body in this childish pink dress. She was a stranger. Barely someone in this tiny life of his. She was like any little girl that could ever be -just as he was a common little boy in her eyes.

That did not matter.  
He did treat her like he would have with anyone -because he wished everyone could smile.

“Dad’s busy with work, so… he’s very late…”

He wanted her to smile.

“Eh, really? My name’s Kaito Kuroba.”

A blue rose gently saluted her as well, between her dazed eyes, as her gaze finally fled from the ground. He had some troubles hiding the excitement that suddenly occurred in his beating heart and body as he realized he… did it.

“Nice to meet you!”

She smiled. For a split second, her worries were gone thanks to the illusion of a rose, and it was enough -more than enough- to seal a destiny neither of them had any idea of, a future that could have never been…. That should never have been.  
He did not know what blue roses were for.

It was enough to implant the seed of disaster into his fragile chest.

**Author's Note:**

> The next chapter may take some time to be published, because I have my exams in June -but no worries, I'll update it for sure! There are too many scenes I am excited to write haha ~


End file.
